Pulse power applications, such as production of a high energy electron beam over a time period of 1 .mu.sec. or less, require beam accelerator modules that operate over correspondingly brief time intervals with reasonable energy efficiency, preferably 50 percent or higher. End uses for resulting charged particle beams include injection of charge particle species into a plasma confinement device, preservation of food and defense applications. One attractive approach for production of an abbreviated, high voltage pulse for the accelerator module(s) uses a little-known technique of non-linear or saturable inductors in an appropriate capacitive-inductive ladder network first discussed by W. S. Melville in Proceedings of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, Vol. 98, Part III, pp. 185-208 (May 1951). The method examined by Melville yields foreshortened pulses but may not improve the ratio of pulse rise time or pulse fall time to the time period of pulse plateau, which ratio should be as small as possible to produce pulses reasonably close to square waves in shape.